Condemning use: Policy note on the 2015 Dubrovnik Action Plan

12. States parties will continue to promote compliance, reinforcing the norms being established by the CCM that stigmatizes cluster munitions and promote their non-use by:

…

(d) in conformity with Article 21, raising concern about any alleged use and condemning any instances of documented use by any actor, effectively calling on all States not party to accede to the Convention.

This action point should be recognized as operationalizing paragraph 3 of Article 21, which states that:

2. Each State Party shall notify the governments of all States not party to this Convention, referred to in paragraph 3 of this Article, of its obligations under this Convention, shall promote the norms it establishes and shall make its best efforts to discourage States not party to this Convention from using cluster munitions.

Read together with the Dubrovnik Declaration, in which states have committed “to condemn any use of cluster munitions, by any actor” and in the context of the chapeau of the Action Plan’s action point 3, “raising concern about any alleged use and condemning any instances of documented use by any actor”, these clearly represent actions to “promote the norms [the convention] establishes” and represent “best efforts to discourage States not party” from using cluster munitions.

It is a valuable contribution to the implementation of the Convention that these concrete measures to raise concern about and to condemn use of cluster munitions are identified as actions that place a state party in “conformity with Article 21”.